


People Like You

by almina



Category: Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 19:57:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11066040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almina/pseuds/almina





	People Like You

Smitty Ryker turned north on Rte. 11. It would take him past Rising Fawn where Desmond now lived . Smitty had kept track of guys in B company to keep track of Desmond. He heard Desmond had been shot up pretty badly on the second foray up Hacksaw. He had picked up TB on Leyte. That resulted in resection of his right lung and removal of five ribs. He heard Doss now had 90% disability after five years in and out of hospitals. Smitty felt sick at the thought.. What could you do on 90% disability? The wiry man who had carried a ton of wounded, hurting human flesh to the escarpment now could not stand upright for any length of time.

Smitty did not understand why he'd felt such urgency to get to Rising Fawn,but he did not question it either. He was on the main drag now. A mule and wagon waited outside a general store alongside three cars, all dented, rusty and pre -War. Children stared at his sky blue Thunderbird. Smitty took it all in, high fronted buildings that looked like the set of a western movie, budding trees along the walk, what kind ? Desmond would know. Smitty was suddenly wildly happy. Desmond drove along this street. Breathed this air. Smitty would find him. He would feel Doss's presence when he got close.

Smitty's heart knew before his head registered it. He gasped and looked at the parking lot beside a barn red building, painted with the words, Rawls Feed and Lumber. Beside a 1950 Ford pickup, stood Desmond. Yes, it was him, a touch of gray in that dark hair and he was thinner, if that was possible. He was struggling to put some twelve foot boards into the truck bed. Smitty pulled up beside him. 

"Hey Des. Let me get that."

Smitty slid out of his car. Desmond stood panting beside the flat bed cart that held boards, nails, a box of shingles, a box of U shaped fencing nails, a roll of roof felt, and two rolls of chicken wire.

"Repairs?" Smitty said by way of greeting..

"Yeah, I promised Dorothy. That woman would work herself into a state of nervous exhaustion if I didn't insist she take a rest. She's off in Macon with some friends from nursing school.. I told her I would make repairs around the house while she was gone."

"I'll help."

Smitty was just the one for the job. 

After his war wounds healed and and he regained strength, he worked in construction riding the post war boom. He was well on his way to being pig rich now that he was buying land, building houses and selling them rather than working for companies that bought land, built houses and sold them.

"I can't afford to pay you," Doss said.

"I would never take your money. I wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for you."

Smitty looked at the man who had haunted him since Hacksaw. Doss was trembling with the effort he had made. Smitty realized that he would never hire someone that frail. Doss just hadn't the endurance for physical work. Not anymore. Smitty felt a leap of gratitude to fate, to the Almighty or to Lady Luck. A week ago he'd had a fierce impulse to drive south. Something had brought him here to help Doss today. 

Smitty unloaded the cart in short order, and put all the stuff neatly into the bed of the pickup. Doss stood aside. He was still winded. 

'"You just tell me what you want done and I'll do it. C'mon, I'm going to get some work gloves," Smitty said. He pushed the cart back into the store. Doss followed him, clutching the rail along the shallow slanting ramp.

As soon as they were inside the store, baby chicks swarmed over their feet. Crazy cute. Smitty, city boy, street scrapper,had never seen baby chickens in real life. He picked one up and stroked it. He was about to ask if it would sing, but he realized before the words came out, that these country boys would laugh their asses off if he asked such a stupid question. No Smitty, baby chickens don't sing.

"Fifty cents apiece," the guy behind the counter said. Smitty pulled out his wallet and bought ten of the little cheeping, squeaking things. The clerk put them in a box. Smitty handed the box to Doss. 

"Food," said the clerk and hefted a fifty pound bag of chicken feed onto the counter. Smitty paid for it and lifted it lightly to his shoulder.

"I'll follow you home," Smitty said as he loaded the chicken feed into the back of Doss's pickup.

Doss set the box on the passenger side of the truck seat. The truck engine coughed before it started. Smitty decided he would have a look at it. Before construction, even before the army, he had worked in a taxi company's repair shop. As he started the T-Bird, it occurred to him he was exactly the person to help Doss at this point. Hmm, Doss's wife was a nurse. Was it hard for her, coming home from work to a man who was still in a lot of ways, an invalid, and always would be. 

They drove out of Rising Fawn along a road so narrow that if another vehicle approached them, they would have to pull off into the grass. After a mile on that and they came to a clearing. In its center stood a small clapboard house, gray paint peeling, ladder up against it, a fenced garden beside what Smitty thought was a chicken coop.

Again, Smitty parked right beside Des.

Desmond left the chickens in the truck.

"I have to patch the holes in the fence or the foxes will get these little creatures. We'll keep 'em in the house tonight." Doss was smiling. "No, they won't sing."

"What, what?"

"I know you wondered if they would sing."

Smitty shook his head. So Desmond read minds too? 

Smitty glanced at the puffy slate gray clouds. Doss planned on a roof repair, none too soon.

Smitty pulled on the work gloves. 

" I'm gonna get the roof felt on before it rains." 

He took a hammer and shingle nails out of the T-Bird's trunk, picked the roll of roof felt out of Desmond's truck, put it on his shoulder and went up the ladder. He glanced at the soffits bulging with leaves and twigs. Desmond was looking up at him. 

"Raccoons, and a squirrel or two," Desmond said and pointed at the soffits

At this moment Smitty saw the roof and more destruction there. If he didn't have the roof felt on before it rained there would be interior damage and probably more than Desmond could repair by himself. Smitty realized he got here in a nick of time. He felt a drop on his face and another on his scalp. He rolled out the roof felt and secured it, not his usual persnickety tidy work but sufficient for a night's protection against the water. He covered the damaged parts of the roof and the area around it, He'd have to replace the boards under it tomorrow, about twenty square feet to Smitty's practiced eye. Desmond had prised off all those shingles to isolate the animal damage. Hard work. Smitty wished that Desmond had realized that he had only to phone or to drop him a line and he would have come running to help before the situation became so dire.

The ladder rattled as he came down. 

"C'mon in before you get soaked."

They stepped up on the front porch and watched the rain start in earnest.

Smitty leaned the roll of roof felt against the house. 

"Next time,call me or send me a post card. I want you to let me take care of things like this," he said. Smitty had business cards for his job. He handed one to Doss. He hoped it might start frequent contact between them.

They went inside. Small, cozy, photos of family on tables, and on the walls scenes from the Bible. It smelled of furniture polish and flowers. To Smitty's surprise, Des offered him a beer. 

"No, we don't drink, but we have friends who do." 

Smitty shook his head. 

"If I say some things later, I don't want you to think it is the alcohol talking."

Desmond took a vegetable casserole from the fridge and put it into the oven.

It smelled wonderful and tasted even better. 

It delighted Smitty who had been living on hamburgers and fries. Desmond spooned out a second helping for him.

"All the vegetables came out of our garden and Dorothy's a great cook."

They ate in silence for a few minutes.

"You ever think about Hacksaw?" Smitty said. He thought about it all the time.

"I keep feeling there was something more I could have done or that I could have done it better."

"You're kidding."

"No. I could have gotten more to safety if I had brought them all to the cliff and then let them down, two by two. Someone would have come up to help. I should have set it up so people could help. They would have, even against orders. I wasn't thinking at the time."

"No, no, no. You did everything humanly possible. There's something I've wanted to tell you.. In the hospital, a doctor told me I should be dead. He sat right beside my bed and asked why I wasn't dead. 

The way he put it, if he had seen the injuries I had during an autopsy - Smitty did a very good imitation of a mid-Atlantic, Ivy League voice, 'I would have had no problem listing the cause of death as a torn aorta and spinal compression from a bullet lodged near T5. That alone would have paralyzed you and compromised your breathing.'

So why was I alive? he said like I owed him an explanation. I told him Desmond Doss got me down from Hacksaw.

"And he said 'Yes, he'd heard about this Desmond Doss, but getting me to the hospital tent wouldn't have been enough to save me. He said, and I remember his exact words. 'You were triaged out you know. Patients are divided into three groups, the ones who will live no matter what, the ones that need medical attention to live and the ones who will die anyway. You were in the third group but you opened your eyes and were calling Desmond, Desmond, Desmond. We couldn't ignore you, even though you were in the 'die anyway' group."

They were quiet a moment. Then Smitty started talking again as if there were something he wanted to get said.

"Do you have a healing touch? Can you make people better by touching them?"

"Are you asking this because I have a sort of different faith? You think I belong to one of those churches where the sermon ain't over until all the snakes are back in the bag?" 

Smitty's heart sank as he feared he had offended Desmond. He reached for Desmond's wrist. Desmond was looking down, a little smile on his face, as if he were enjoying a private joke. He patted Smitty's hand. Smitty's nerves registered zinging warmth at Desmond's touch.

"I don't know what to think,"Smitty said. "What I remember is so strange. You had just let a guy down the escarpment, and you were whispering. "One more, please God, help me get one more."

Then you looked toward my body. The Japanese were close enough to drive you over the edge. I was outside myself looking at my body, and I sure looked dead. But you roped the two of us together and said 'I've got you'. And down we went." I could almost move my arms to hang on to you tighter. And you kept saying. 'I've got you' like you knew I was afraid. Then I was watching us from a few feet away, and looking up at the Japs who were really pissed off, like you had deprived them of a target. But our guys started shooting up from the ground and bought us a few minutes." 

Des was looking at Smitty with that kindly tolerant expression that was all his own.

"I'm not crazy," Smitty said. "I was really watching it all from a few feet away I saw how the wind lifted up your hair 'cause we were coming down so fast." Smitty leaned toward Doss. 

"But since I already sound crazy there's no reason to stop now. You healed the damage the bullets did just by touching me, when you took me to the edge of the cliff and held on to me on the way down. I felt it in my chest. You've seen what happens when the aorta is shot through, how it spurts like a garden hose. The surgeon said that I couldn't have sustained such a wound and lived. What he saw when I was opened up was a slit on the descending aorta with a lot of blood slopping around. He said that slit could never have been open. The spinal injury was survivable," he said. "if and only if the swelling went down and maybe, just maybe you don't get infected and nerve function comes back, if you're lucky. If it doesn't, you're just a head on a pillow.You lie there and wish you were dead."

"Healing touch, heh?" Desmond did not sound disbelieving, or contemptuous, but he never did anything, by word or deed, to put someone down.

"When I was a kid, my mother made us weed the garden. I was kneeling in the dirt, and this half grown rabbit comes up to me. It was all chewed up, and dragging its hind end. I saw the bloody tooth holes on its sides. Wild cat got it I think, then let it go because it couldn't get away. Saving it for later. I patted it and put it inside my shirt before my father saw it and told me to shoot it so it couldn't eat up the vegetables. I carried it around a while then put it down beside the beets. I hated beets, and that rabbit repaid me by eating up half the row of beets and nothing else. It wasn't dragging by the time I left the garden that afternoon. For the rest of the summer, it would come up to me when I was outside. After a week, the tooth holes were closed up and the fur grown over them. So maybe I can help heal creatures who need it. But that will stay between you and me."

"I sure needed healing that day. You did more than get me off Hacksaw.."

Desmond looked straight at him and Smitty felt that odd warming, melting sensation in his chest. He did not let himself say aloud the thoughts he had fired at Doss during the years after the war, things he could not imagine himself saying to anyone, let alone another man. ' I love you. You're it for me. I did not think people like you walked the earth.'

So conversation turned to tomorrow's work. Desmond produced a freehand but precise scale drawing of how he intended to enlarge the chicken yard by the coop. He told Smitty he had the posts and the post hole digger. 

Smitty knew Doss had been dreading that job, fearing that he was not up to the exertion. But Smitty could handle it. Easily. Smitty flashed on himself working, digging, setting the fence posts, stretching the fence and nailing it while Desmond lounged on the porch. That would be a perfect way to spend the day, but he knew Doss would not let himself take it easy while someone else was working on his project.

"It's not just making more room for the chickens. We make a garden in last year's chicken yard and move the birds to the other pen. They make the soil richer and eat up all kinds of bugs."

Doss was up early and made coffee for Smitty. He set the cup on the coffee table he had moved to the side of the fold out sofa bed. Doss didn't drink coffee but he did not impose his beliefs on other people. Smitty thought Desmond bringing him coffee was a wonderful way to wake up.

They stood on the porch, listening to the birds.

"Roof first," Smitty said. "then the chicken yard." He meant to do things that Doss could not help him with, force the guy to rest. Smitty worked fast, clearing off the damaged part of the roof, cutting out the chewed through boards and heaving them to the ground. He tidied the hole in the roof, measured it and went to the ground to cut the boards to the necessary lengths. Doss went up the ladder to see what Smitty had done.

"Worse than I thought," he said. I was dreading doing that. "Prayed that my strength would last but I got sick again. I prayed for help.  
And you came along." 

That startled Smitty, that he could be the answer to a prayer given all the things he had thought about Doss, the daydreams, the full on wake- up- sweating dreams at night. God must be a perverse son of a bitch to make Smitty the answer to Doss' prayer. . Smitty would never allow himself to say such a thing to Desmond, so he edited his thoughts down. 

"God has a sense of humor," he said.

Doss grinned as if Smitty hadn't fooled him a bit. Smitty's feelings for Doss had been his secret, or so he thought. On Hacksaw, Smitty, paralyzed from the swelling aound his spinal cord, felt death close and he was sick with terror. He had told Doss he was afraid. Desmond, incredibly, not only rescued him but offered comfort, dropping down into a hole on the way to the escarpment. A battlefield has a tidal rhythm, the gunfire sometimes so dense that a sparrow could not fly across it without being obliterated, other times, someone like Doss, with the hand of God on him, could carry more than his own weight and run across the field of fire. While they sat waiting for the lull in gunfire , Doss had pulled Smitty's head to his chest. Smitty heard the valves of Desmond's heart battering together, clattering like an engine about to blow. Desmond rocked him. It eased the fear. Smitty no longer felt his life ebbing away. Desmond was making everything alright. When he thought about it years later, it occured to Smitty that moment was a more profound intimacy than anything they could have got up to in bed. Desmond held him until the tide of gunfire abated, then he said, "Time to go," and took Smitty over his shoulders and ran the rest of the way to the escarpment.

Smitty lay unconscious until that crazy moment when he left his body and saw what was happening around him. Doss was letting man after man down the escarpment. Smitty stood right behind him and wanted so much help him, to wrap his hands around that rope that was going slippery with blood from Desmond's abraded hands. Somehow Smitty did help a little, keeping the bodies from descending too quickly. Then Doss, with mad courage, went back to find another injured soldier and bring him to the edge, to ease him down to safety. Smitty tried to get through to Doss, to make him hear- just get yourself down to safety, but Doss didn't seem to think that death and injury had anything to do with him. Yet Desmond wasn't crazy. He wanted to live as much as much as anyone else. In that frustrating moment Smitty understood. Desmond had struck a bargain, if God would let him get one more, Doss was willing, perfectly willing, to swap his life for that.

Smitty looked at his own body lying yards away from the cliff edge, but how could that be? He was so close to Desmond he could touch him. Smitty saw bullets flying smacking into trees and splutting into the dead. But gunfire was so slow motion now. Smitty realized what he could do. Since Doss seemed to have no sense of self preservation, Smitty put himself between Desmond and any bullets heading for him. The bullets struck Smitty, they hurt like hell, but they did not incapacitate his ghostly body, nor did they strike Doss. Let the Japanese empty their rifles at him. Smitty was not used to feeling gratitude and he did not know to whom he should direct it. but he wanted to thank someone, something, for allowing him to protect Doss. Doss and Smitty went back and forth as Doss collected the wounded, murmuring to them, 'I've got you, you're going home, it's almost over', saving soldier after soldier. Smitty took his ghostly body for granted, just as he had his physical body. Finally the Japanese were so close even Doss thought it was time to leave the area. Then Desmond did something that won Smitty's heart. He went to Smitty's physical body roped it to his own. Together they rolled off the escarpment. Falling, falling. Smitty could not let Doss crash into the earth. He willed them to slow down, and with that thought? hope? prayer? there was no more slack in the rope. They landed softly in the arms of the men who had gathered to witness Doss work his miracle.

Surgery and recovery seemed like a vacation after the hours on Hacksaw.. Despite unconsciousness and sketchy vital signs, Smitty was aware of everything around him, aware that the medical people thought he was a goner. Smitty knew that after the second assuault on Hacksaw, Doss still lived, though the wounds and brewing sickness in him put that in doubt. Smitty was not in the habit of praying but he wished there were someone to whom he could offer his own life to save Desmond's. Take me, not him.

It took a few weeks of unexpected recovery before the medical staff realized Smitty would live. He knew they felt some guilt for writing off a healthy young man, Smitty worked that guilt to find out all he could about Doss. Doss , riddled with systemic infection, was now on a hospital ship. Guys everywhere offered to donate blood for him and were miffed when they were told that they could soon be injured in battle and need every drop in their own bodies. 

Smitty overheard a soldier, a corporal, griping at a doctor. 

"It's my blood, and I'll do what I want with it, asshole," the corporal said. He added 'sir' as he remembered the doctor was an officer. That made Smitty smile. What was it about Desmond that undermined military discipline?

VJ Day ,the end of the war in the Pacific, and after a few weeks, for Smitty, it was the end of Army. He said good by without a tear. 

He healed well. Some guys from Company B hadn't been so lucky; their wounds kept hurting, or stayed infected. Smitty assumed it was Doss who healed him. Smitty kept track of Desmond who was back in the hospital. Again. There was some fundemental unfairness about Doss' continued sickness. Desmond had restored Smitty to life and health, and Smitty was getting right into post war life, money grubbing with enthusiasm but he had heard Doss could not stand upright for more than a few minutes.. Smitty thought how great it would be to run into Doss in peace time, away from the medical consequences of the war. They would spend time together. He could make life easier, nicer for Doss.. 

Smitty was what would be called, decades hence, a workaholic. He was not going to spend his life reminiscing about the war. The only thing about the war he liked remembering was Desmond. Smitty wouldn't have blamed Doss if he avoided him. But then came a firestorm of thoughts about Doss, concern for him, and the urge to drive south. Smitty told his foreman, he needed a vacation, he would be back soon, there was something he had to attend to.

He knew Desmond lived in Rising Fawn but he had known nothing of Doss' circumstances except his ill health. Smitty was happy to help Doss in all he needed to do and what he wanted to do. Paint the peeling exterior of the little house. Not a problem. Smitty had a rotary sander in the trunk of his car. He had the clapboard prepped in a day. Doss painted. He was no longer strong enough to wield the sander. Smitty told Doss that he could take care of everything he needed. 

"Just ask. I'm not a mind reader like you."

Smitty enlarged the pen beside the chicken coop. Doss approached him with the box of chicks. 

"You do the honors." 

Meaning it was for Smitty turn them lose in the pen. Smitty tipped up the box. The little fuzzy things jumped onto the grass of the pen cheeping and running everywhere. Smitty laughed to see that, as they ran around without fear. He was happy as a little kid. It crossed his mind to move south, to stay near Desmond 

But did Doss want him around as much as he wanted to be around Doss? It would too horrible, too painful, for Smitty to think that Doss was just being kind to him because he thought Smitty might be lonely. 

Smitty had helped paint the house, repaired the roof and soffits. He checked Desmond's truck to find that hesitancy in starting, The plugs were okay, but a line from the distributor was bitten part way through. Probably squirrels under the hood, chewing away. Smitty replaced the cable. Doss wanted to drive his T-Bird. In some ways he was a typical Southern boy who appreciated high horsepower. Smitty handed him the keys. Doss drove well. He had good reflexes despite what the war had done to him. Finally Smitty had taken care of all the things that required attention. He had run out of pretexts to stay near Desmond. 

"Time for me to get back to work," Smitty said. 

"Too bad, it's been wonderful to have you down here, besides all the things you've done. Just to have your company."

Doss. for all his warmth, was not demonstrative so it surprised Smitty when Desmond hugged him.

"Next time you plan on staying longer. You were the only thing I liked about the Army," Doss said.


End file.
